Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Are You Not Entertained? - A Banquet of Consequences

 

"No doubt it is more comfortable to deliberately wear blinkers that prevent one from seeing the evil done in the discharge of their responsibility— to be unwilling to see that one is defending murder and robbery. 

All my life I have been fighting against the spirit of narrowness and violence, arrogance, intolerance in its absolute, merciless consistency.   

I have also worked to overcome this spirit with its evil consequences, such as nationalism in excess, racial persecution, and materialism.   

In regards to this, the National Socialists are correct in killing me.  In that, my conscience drove me – and in the end, that is a man's duty."

Helmuth James Graf von Moltke,  Executed in Plötzensee Prison, Berlin, 23 January 1945


"It is not enough to withdraw from the mob, not enough to go to another place: we have to withdraw from such attributes of the mob as are within us." 

Michel de Montaigne

 

"You made this monster, and as long as things were going well you gave him whatever he wanted.  You turned Germany over to this arch-criminal, you swore allegiance to him by every incredible oath he chose to put before you.” 

Friedrich Reck-Malleczewen

 

"The lofty mind of man can be imprisoned by the artifices of its own making. If there are damned souls in Hell, it is because men blind themselves.”

E.A. Bucchianeri, Faust: My Soul Be Damned for the World


“Religion used to be the opium of the people. To those suffering humiliation, pain, illness, and serfdom, religion promised the reward of an after life. But now, we are witnessing a transformation: a true opium of the people is the belief in nothingness after death, the huge solace, the huge comfort of thinking that for our betrayals, our greed, our cowardice, our murders, we are not going to be judged.”

Czeslaw Milosz, Discreet Charm of Nihilism

 

Stocks continued to take another leg down today.

Dip buyers were spanked once again.

The second low is still in motion.  Let's see where it stops and actually sets in.

Although technically we could just go for a market break here.  We've  already banked quite a few failed rallies along the way.

Gold and silver managed to bounce, and hold it.

The crypto currencies are being taken out and beaten with ugly sticks.   

What a surprise.

VIX remains elevated.

The Dollar slid across the 104 handle, and managed to hang on to it.

A strong dollar here is not favorable to the US economy, since it encourages imports and discourages exports.

But it does favor the financiers, who play the international game of assets and acquisitions, plundering on a global scale as they have done so well and so often domestically in recent years.

Aren't you glad you are watching this carnage from 'higher ground' and relative safety? 

Sooner or later everyone sits down to a banquet of consequences.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Sorrows of Empire

 

"'After dinner, 'Larry [Summers] leaned back in his chair and offered me some advice,' Ms. Warren writes. 'I had a choice. I could be an insider or I could be an outsider.  Outsiders can say whatever they want.  But people on the inside don’t listen to them.  Insiders, however, get lots of access and a chance to push their ideas.   People — powerful people — listen to what they have to say.   But insiders also understand one unbreakable rule: They don’t criticize other insiders.'

I had been warned."

Elizabeth Warren, A Fighting Chance


“If you shut up truth and bury it under the ground, it will but grow, and gather to itself such explosive power that the day it bursts through it will blow up everything in its way.”

Émile Zola

"The crash has laid bare many unpleasant truths about the United States.  One of the most alarming, says a former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, is that the finance industry has effectively captured our government.  

This is the contempt in which they hold the majority of American people and the political process: the common people are easily led fools, and everyone else who is smart enough to know better has their price. And they would beggar every middle class voter in the US before they will voluntarily give up one dime of their ill gotten gains."

Simon Johnson, The Quiet Coup, May 2009

 

"The Romans, like others, as soon as they grew rich, grew corrupt; and in their corruption sold the lives and freedoms of themselves, and of one another.”

Samuel Johnson

“A decline in courage may be the most striking feature that an outside observer notices in the West today.  The Western world has lost its civic courage.  Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling and intellectual elite, causing an impression of a loss of courage by the entire society.”

Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn


"Nemesis, the goddess of retribution and vengeance, the punisher of pride and hubris, waits impatiently for her meeting with us."

Chalmers Johnson


Stocks managed to hold their own today, a fairly meager accomplishment given the deep level of selling that they currently are maintaining.

Gold and silver were hit by steady selling throughout the NY trading session.  They are now approaching what may be a tradable bottom, depending on what the other financial markets may do.

VIX remains elevated.

The Dollar strengthened further to just below the 104 handle.

Have a pleasant evening.

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Market Liquidation

 

“Not everyone who calls ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only those who do the will of my Father.  Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name?  Did we not drive out demons in your name?  Did we not do mighty deeds in your name?’  Then I will declare solemnly, ‘I never knew you.  Depart from me, you lawless ones."

Matthew 7:21-23 

 

"Shepherd me, O God,
Beyond my wants,
Beyond my fears,
From death into life."

Marty Haugen, Shepherd Me O God

 

"And he said, ‘These are they who have come out of the great tribulation; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.

Never again will they hunger;
   never again will they thirst.
The sun will not beat down on them,
   nor any scorching heat.
For the Lamb at the center of the throne
   will be their shepherd;
  he will lead them to springs of living water.
And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”’

Revelation 7:13-17

 

Pretty much everything was sold today, as market participants were hitting the exits in a surprisingly orderly manner.

Even the Dollar, which has been a bulwark, was largely unchanged on the day.

Stocks were just battered, setting new 'second lows' in the process.

The SP 500 closed a fairly old but significant gap on the chart as indicated.

Gold and silver were beaten with ugly sticks.

Let's see if we need to have a selling climax to calm these markets down, or some unexpected news.

The instability of the markets, the weak foundation of their valuations, are now apparent to all, as we had suggested.

If you are on higher ground you might breathe a sigh of relief and give thanks.

Have a pleasant evening.

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - American Gothic - Oh the Bovinity!

 

"Why do the economists continually excuse outrageously unsustainable economic behaviour and financial systems that are as productive as games of chance?  Why do some media outlets obviously take sides and pander to the worst biases in their viewers, supplying them with easy reflexive answers to any suggestion that something might actually be wrong?  Why do adult people fall for this and regress to childish name calling so readily? 

It is because they are afraid.  They know the system is broken, that the country is in for hard times, and that the work of reform is going to be difficult and painful.  It is so easy to adopt whatever red or blue meme, whomever you think is going to deliver undeserved wealth to you, or at least safety and position. As always look for a fallguy, some identifiable and out of favor group.  The search for scapegoats may be be violent.   

At turning points such as these, when the time is right, a 'great man' will stand up and many will follow.  Who will it be, and what principals and principles will they represent?

Obama was such a one, but he is obviously like the character of Robert the Bruce in the movie Braveheart, who chooses practically and cynically to support the nobles.  He is finished; no one will follow him as his betrayal becomes too painfully obvious.

Will it be the banal fascist with the simplistic, easy answers [bingo], a leftist with retribution to offer, or a real 'braveheart' who has nothing more to offer than the hardship of freedom?" 

Jesse, Class Warfare American Style, 5 January 2010 

 

"Monetary and regulatory policy encourage asset bubbles to proliferate.  Hot money seeks out the conscious mispricing of risk.  Capital, in the form of both money and personal talent, increasingly flows into malinvestment and the gaming of markets.   The productive economy languishes, left wanting for the lack of creative resources and attention.   The bubble rises to unsustainable valuations— and fails, and a nation's capital is consumed." 

Jesse 5 August 2019, The Men Who Sold the World

Stocks continued their declines at a measure, steady selling pace showing little panic.

Surprisingly enough, VIX declined today in spite of the drop in stocks.

The Dollar also fell back a bit.

Gold bounced, while silver fell in sympathy with equities.

That second low in stocks has been set, and nailed on the charts with an iron spike.

Let's see if it takes a panic selloff to make for a viable support level, or if stocks can just start drifting higher and pull the dip buyers, who were spanked sideways this week, back in to buy again. 

On May 9^th Russia will hold its WW II victory celebration in Moscow.  If Putin is going to say something inflammatory about the Ukraine this might be the time that he says or does something that disturbs the global risk factors.  Or he might take the opportunity to declare victory and let the 'special military operation' unwind.  Much of this depends on Putin's own base of power within his government.

In any case, the danger from exogenous risks remains high, given the unstable underpinnings of the markets.

Have a pleasant weekend.